A delicate, sometimes messy balance of nostalgia and advancement.
What They Say:
Tactics Ogre, crown jewel of the tactical role-playing genre, is reborn! Based on the 2010 release, the game features improved graphics and sound, as well as updated game design, bringing to life a new Tactics Ogre that remains true to its roots.
Content:
As someone who has no affinity or nostalgia for the Tactics Ogre series, I went into Tactics Ogre: Reborn as a somewhat newer tactical RPG fan due to the likes of Triangle Strategy and Final Fantasy Tactics as a kid on the GBA.
In the end, I was moderately impressed and enjoyed what I experienced with Tactics Ogre: Reborn, problems and all. For starters, I am aware that there are a lot of changes gameplay-wise for this updated version of the classic PSP remake, but this is mostly from my perspective with no attachment to that version.
Visually, Tactics Ogre: Reborn is one of the strangest-looking older RPGs remade for modern consoles from Square Enix. Sure, it would’ve benefited greatly from the HD-2D treatment, but there is this overwhelming sense of blurriness with regards to the character models.
It seems that in the process of smoothing out the pixel art characters that the avatars suddenly have this blurred lack of detail to them that I didn’t understand nor appreciate. I don’t mind the smoothed out textures and designs, but only if done right and this isn’t the case of that.
However, this, thankfully, didn’t take away too much from the environments and levels, which fared much better than the actual characters. In turn, it wasn’t too much of a problem playing through the various battles as the battlefields themselves were fine.
Gameplay in Tactics Ogre: Reborn plays out on the classic grid-based system where you move around, maneuver around enemies, and use various skills, weapons, and spells to take down foes. Everyone is divided up into classes that specialize in various techniques with differing stats.
There is a simplification in this game of the leveling system, tying the player’s level to the class, instead of separating them like before. In addition, classes are made more viable through the use of the new cards that appear on the battlefield.
I will admit that the difficulty of Tactics Ogre: Reborn isn’t too challenging but fits into the right spot as it has this strange mechanic of having level caps for characters. The overall union level of the team is the max level that each player can get to, which isn’t hard to accomplish with even minor grinding.
The overall team level goes up through the story, basically acting as a soft cap for how strong you can be in each fight. This meant there was always a constant level of challenge, but nothing too particularly difficult. I actually kind of liked this balance but I still would have preferred the ability to overpower and experiment more if I wanted to.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn definitely shows its age in the battles, too, feeling rather slow and cumbersome with lengthy fights that aren’t mitigated much by the single speed up option. It would have been nice to get a 3x or 4x speed option, or, heck, even an auto-battle option for some of the lesser fights that aren’t too challenging.
This is especially helpful when navigating the burdensome UI that is far too convoluted and ugly to look at. I dreaded going through and equipping my team as the menus are so messy and unorganized with too much information and options thrown onto a single character page in a disjointed way.
The real motivation to keep playing Tactics Ogre was in the classes and story. I enjoyed switching job classes for the characters in my party and seeing them come into their own as lightning spell-wielding mages and game-changing healers in the midst of a highly politically-driven story.
Given the similarity to some of my favorite Square Enix games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, the story of Tactics Ogre: Reborn is right up my alley. It takes a good bit of time to get going but I appreciated the immense amount of choice you had in determining the paths for Denam and his allies.
I especially liked the Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward method of being able to see the entire journey I made through a timeline of my choices and letting me jump back at any point to see how things would have turned out differently if I made a different choice.
This far extended my time with Tactics Ogre: Reborn beyond what I would have played otherwise and I found that the twisting and turning plot really had some meaningful outcomes that felt much more impactful than even the recent Triangle Strategy.
In Summary:
Tactics Ogre: Reborn finds itself in a strange middle ground between nostalgia and modernity. There are steps forward with the class levels and gameplay improvements like cards on the battlefield, but then steps backward with the UI, party level system, and blurry non-pixelated sprites.
Despite the slow, cumbersome nature of the grid-based strategic battles, I found a lot of enjoyment in changing up classes to find what worked best for my team. The real draw, though, comes from the political and emotional storyline that is filled with many choices that actually matter and easily let you see how things would have played out differently. Something that even recent tactical RPGs could learn from.
Grade: C+
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Age Rating: 13+
Release Date: November 11, 2022
MSRP: $49.99
Platform: Switch (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
This review was done with a review copy provided by the publisher. We are grateful for their continued support.
